Focus: The Scottish Socialist party stars in Carry on Trotsky

Conspiracy theories abound over whether Tommy Sheridan is a sex fiend or simply an acute embarrassment to the party he led

IN THE communist show trials of the 1930s, Soviet dissidents such as Zinoviev and Bukharin stood in the dock and confronted the inevitable prospect of a Bolshevik bullet in the head.

They got off lightly compared with Tommy Sheridan, the former leader of the Scottish Socialist party (SSP) and the country’s latest libel trial celebrity, who this week was obliged to endure the singular ordeal of being asked repeatedly to scrutinise on video screens the newspaper headline “Married MSP is Spanking Swinger” (as well as the less-prevalent banner “My Kinky Four-in-a-Bed Orgy with Tommy”) while his mother sat next to him.

It is the Freudian nightmare of every man to have his sexual behaviour mentioned within even a mile of his mother. There are infamous urban legends in which this non-negotiable taboo is breached, with horrifying effect on every man who hears them. Rather than debate, say, the veracity of